Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 6, Number 1, 1 January 1989 — OHA Volunteers In Action [ARTICLE]

OHA Volunteers In Action

By Solomon Loo, Director of Volunteers OHA volunteers had an important role in processing the over 20,000 ballots that were returned to OHA in the mail-in referendum on the single definition of being a Hawaiian. Two letter-opening machines were used to open envelopes at the rate of 100 every 20 seconds apieee, but, until these machines arrived, volunteers used regular letter-openers, scissors, fingernails and anything else that worked. At that time, everyone looked forward to a very long day since eaeh envelope took 5 seconds to open. However, two machines arrived from Hawaii Mailing Equipment and then things began to move. The small mountain of mailbags began to shrink at a noticeable rate and after several hours the end was in sight and the ballots were ready to be ma-chine-counted the next day. The ballot-counting maehine, operated by Glenn Sailer of Sequoia Pacific Systems, did its job in less than 30 minutes, compared to the 80 manhours it took to prepare the ballots the day before. Many thanks to the following volunteers who contributed to this important activity: Clara Batambucal, Peter Ching, Helen Gandall, Anita Gouveia, Ann Heffner, Dennis Kam, Julia Lagunero, John Larson, Nikki Paisner and Steve Tataii. We weleome these new volunteers to OHA: Anita Gouveia (Kaneohe), Richard Hashiba (Pearl City), Dennis Kam (Ahuimanu), and Gerald Ting (Nuuanu). If you have any questions about the Volunteer Program please eall Solomon Loo at 261-3285.